Re: Montale - Full Incense Any experience with this one?

Originally Posted by Jock_With_Scents

What are you impressions of this Montale? How does it compare to other Incense frags?

I hate it. But I haven't actually tried it because it is French, classified as a unisex scent and comes in a 100ml bottle - so it goes against all of my farcical criteria for choosing a fragrance. Any Tom Ford fragrance is better than this one.

Re: Montale - Full Incense Any experience with this one?

Originally Posted by petruccijc

I hate it. But I haven't actually tried it because it is French, classified as a unisex scent and comes in a 100ml bottle - so it goes against all of my farcical criteria for choosing a fragrance. Any Tom Ford fragrance is better than this one.

Miss Anita Cocktail...make yourself a gin and tonic now and go for a walk on the beach. Leave that silly leopard print scarf at home though. Spritz some Elizabeth Arden - Red Door and off you go, oh and take the puppies too.

Re: Montale - Full Incense Any experience with this one?

Picked this up about three weeks ago from The Perfume Shoppe in Vancouver and glad I did. I personally like it. Don't know how to describe it other than it's a pretty powerful and incense prominent scent that for me has great longevity. The listed notes are:Somalia incense , rounded by elemi and labdanum resins and cedar and patchouli. A great masculine, but not overpowering incense fragrance for anyone who enjoys incense IMO.

Re: Montale - Full Incense Any experience with this one?

I got a bottle of it from the Perfume Shoppe last week. It is all Incense! Reminds me of a stronger version of M.Micallef's Shanaan. I am still on the fence if I really like it. Only worn it once so far, just too humid where I live to wear it right now.

Re: Montale - Full Incense Any experience with this one?

I've really been enjoying wearing Full Incense during this cold winter. It seems to go perfectly with thick sweaters, wool coats, and flannel shirts. I wore it with Avignon and Tauer Incense Extreme and I realized how different the three are. Incense Extreme goes on clean, like frigid crisp mountain air. Avignon has the smokey church incense vibe we all know and yet both seem arid and far less complex and rich than Full Incense. The Montale actually reminds me in a strange way of Tom Ford's Amber Absolute if you turned the amber almost down to nothing and amped up the incense to max. To me, it's earthy, resiny, peppery, slightly charred (eventually) and rich with a faint sweetness that does make it feel "full," or at least much fuller than most incense based fragrances I've experienced. It also has a warmth that seems missing from a lot of incenses. The only downfall is that I wished that heaviness lasted longer. On me, it fades to a whisper after a few hours which after experiencing that ridiculously rich, resiny opening seems unlikely. Besides that though, it's my favorite incense thus far.

Re: Montale - Full Incense Any experience with this one?

It is a very churchy incense. Bois d'ences is also a churchy incense but has "dirtier" and dryer feel to it. Where as for the Full Incense, it's birght, fresh, kind of soapy fee to it. I love it. I can't remember the smell of Avignon so I can't really companre FI with that. =(

Re: Montale - Full Incense Any experience with this one?

IMO, this is the darker haired twin brother of the blonde heeley cardinal... I find it's a bit darker and richer than cardinal but not overpowering... I love cardinal but it so ethereal and smells like a ray of sunshine if sunshine had a scent, this is what moonlight smells like, beautiful scent and so much like church incense

Re: Montale - Full Incense Any experience with this one?

Originally Posted by Jock_With_Scents

What are you impressions of this Montale? How does it compare to other Incense frags?

Ive had it for about a week, and I love it....it does have a very church like feel to it, but I enjoy it.
Also I don't feel like it terribly complex either.... there are a few Taur's I would prefer to this one.

Re: Montale - Full Incense Any experience with this one?

Full Incense is a pure deep frankincense scent. The closest other fragrances to it that I've tried are Profumum's Olibanum and Ave Luxe Incense. There is little sweetness, spice or lightheartedness in this very solemn, liturgical incense fragrance. Considering the intent to be a full incense this succeeds better than possibly any other frankincense scent I've tried. But, it is not very easy to wear often due to its dark nature.

Re: Montale - Full Incense Any experience with this one?

Nearly bottle-worthy but it doesn't last on my skin as long as I would like it to. I once spritzed myself half a dozen times with it, in the Montale boutique but could hardly detect anything a couple of hours later. A real pity...

Re: Montale - Full Incense Any experience with this one?

Originally Posted by rafflesia

How does Full Incense compare with Bois d'Encens?

If I already own BdE do I need FI?

Bois D'Encens is, quality-wise, on a completely higher level. Animalic, dirty, extremely dark...basically there's nothing like it around. If I'd really have to compare it to another frag I'd say It's a sort of warmer Zagorsk (coniferous galore). Full Incense is the Avignon Xerox copy. Churchy frankincense with camomille.

Said that, IMO, If you own BdE it may worth owning Avignon instead of FI.

Re: Montale - Full Incense Any experience with this one?

I'm surprised there is no actual review up of this yet and it's been out for some time now. I bought a small sample of this recently and I really like this. Of course there are similarities with this and Avignon and Cardinal. But really if you like those two scents and I own both, you can really put them beside FI to really see if there is a difference, and there are some is what I found.

I really like it still, even though many think it's just too much like Avignon. I have to say this is a liturgical smelling fragrance like Cardinal and Avignon for sure. But Avignon to my nose has that stale old damp cloth smell that FI doesn't, but I do like the damp staleness still but this is still interesting as FI seems more refined and cleaner and doesn't have the smoke quality Avignon does, and Cardinal has a real unique sharp note and lighter and a touch brighter and slightly sparkles and a touch sweeter. To me when I did a side by side of both I found they were all very interesting enough to be different but similar due to the church scent they all have.

All three are different enough that I would buy a bottle of this. But I really love scents that have a catholic church smell or just liturgical, so this will be FB worthy for me. I wouldn't say that it's knock off of Avignon at all but only it really has a liturgical scent of a true catholic church, so this is why people might think this, but I found it was different enough that it could stand on it's own. Obviously this scent may have never been created if Avignon hadn't, well I do think the whole church incense thing that happened a while back obviously had to have had a lot of influence in the creation of this scent.

I think that when they thought about the ingredients they probably had Avignon as a reference, but I think they still managed to make it their own, but I can see how many will think it does smell like Avignon, but remember lots of people said Cardinal was just a Avignon light, but really do a side by side it is very much a liturgical scent but again very unique that it is it's own. I just say if you really love Avignon and Cardinal or just churchy scents this one got it right, and you should give it a try. It is a true church scent. To me FI might be the smell of the vestry room in a church, where all the vestments and robes are kept and other sacred objects as it has this really refined quality that I would compare to this. Cardinal could be the smell within a confessional booth in the church, and that may sound strange, but I went to a lot of catholic mass when I was young, and this is what this smells reminds me of. And well Avignon is the smoke from the incense that the priests burns during mass. So really if you like true church scents all three are great and if your nose can tell the difference like me you should try this scent.

I do wear MdM also but would not compare that as being similar enough to include it with these three or Bois D'Encens either, as both Cardinal and FI both have the Avignon quality to them, and that's why I chose to look at them specifically, as all three do share a similar church scent to them. Another liturgical church scent I would recommend is like the smell of damp rotting church pews or interrior of an old rotting church is L'Artisan D'Humeur A Rien, which is a work of art IMO. Imagiane damp old rotting church pews that have been infused with incense over 100's of years in a decayed old church.

Re: Montale - Full Incense Any experience with this one?

Thanks for the great reviews. I smelled FI last year, but I had tried so many other things that I did not give it my full attention. The first impression was that it smelled similar to Avignon. I need to give it another try.